[Update: There's a phone number on the site, 1-502-383-1956, that connects you to a Google Voice line. Yeah, this is starting to sound like some garage developer's having a few jollies.]
A website with a teaser trailer for something called Slavery the Game just opened up. Slavery the Game. A strategy game in which you buy, sell, and "discipline" slaves.
Ummmmm... yeeeeeeeah....
There is no way on Earth that this can be real. The game is purported to arrive on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC in Spring 2012, carrying a rating of Adults Only. Considering that none of the console manufacturers would allow an AO game on their platform, this whole business seems like viral marketing for another as-of-yet-revealed game. This is supported by the fact that searching for any info on the supposed "developer," Javelin Reds Gaming, turns up nothing.
Regardless of the reason for this... thing, who thought this would be a good idea? It's not like it's played up for laughs, either -- it's not like Dave Chappelle's Roots spoof. The supposed game sounds extremely visceral and serious in tone. What kind of reaction is this going for? What possible benefit could come out of this whole mess? Just... I... WHY!?
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The ESRB has not rated any games relating to "Slavery". Gotta be an ad campaign for some new announcement... but what? And I get the feeling this'll wind up hurting whatever product is related to this. It goes beyond "Dude. Not Funny." territory straight into "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" territory.
Whatever point this trailer is trying to make is going over my head. It had better get to the real thing it's pitching or trying to spread the word about FAST before we get ANOTHER unwarranted vidyagaem controversy.
Maybe this is a joke to stir up more shit on the internet after the trash lady controversy. There's a phone number on the website with a 001 area code. Where the hell is that if it's even real?
Also the guy's voice was Southern American (slight drawl saying "Javelin"), which I'm not sure if that makes it funnier or more offensive... Either way they should know better being an American company.
The difference between this and games about school shootings is that those games weren't on the PS3/360. Anyone can make an offensive game and post it on the internets but they need permission to publish it on consoles.
Man... it just goes to show you that there are some messed up people out there to even THINK of a game/joke like that. Lets all laugh at the people who were sold and mistreated, because that's SO funny right?
... however, a Tropico style game that works within the paradigm of pre to early colonization era Africa that shows the African practice of indentured servitude going horribly arwy would make for interesting edu-gaming, I reckon. As an African regional leader, do you sell you indentured servants for a power grab, or do you resist the power offered by foreign slavers?
Just saying. If you're talking about games getting that "movie" respect, somebody's gotta go there, right?
Redjavelin.com might have something to do with it. They're a PR/social media promotional group and this has people talking. Wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing is really an ad for the advertisers.
"i'm an upper middle class white american, and this offends me because... well, just because!"
fuck you all. this is hilarious. i'd buy the shit out of it.
also, how has no one thought that maybe this is to drum up attention for an anti-racism game? makes sense to me. then again, I don't live on destructoid and huff jenkum.
That's terrible PR for a PR firm to have produced. You can't be right. I can see an idiotic dev team thinking it was a good idea just to get attention, but any legit marketing team should be drawn and quartered for this shit. It is reaaally well-produced though.
By discipline, do they mean just torture or can you also rape them into submission? RapeLay was fun but I feel like it didn't have enough torture, so this could be a good mix of the two worlds.
I can appreciate how you might find it hard to believe but as El Jefe himself has pointed out, advertisers don't always have the same sense of ethics as most people.
I know that I'm going to sound like a major asshole for saying this, and I just might be... but is it really worth getting worked up over a trailer for a (potentially fake) trailer for a game about slavery when there's games the let you murder innocent people and kill dogs? That's not even mentioning the fact that the games industry is notorious for womanizing - when was the last time you saw a female lead in a video game that wasn't buxom and scantily clad?
I don't think that slavery should be put up on a pedestal, but it's pretty clear that the gaming community likes to cherry pick their moral outrage.
I hope it plays like Theme Park. I'm in! Plus I'm not sure the slaves have to be african american anyway. As long as children, elderly, all sexual persuasions and races including caucasian are included as slave property its tasteful in my book. I mean selling a child into slavery in Fallout 3 felt good and all but it was definitely missing the business strategy side of slavery. I'm preordering also.
I remember back in the C64 days there was a 20/20 (news show) blurb about a REAL game where you ran a Nazi concentration camp. I found said game later and despite it's questionable content and "cartoony" graphics it was a pretty decent management/sim game.
I'm just saying, I got a guy fired from the police force in the new Deus Ex, then he tried to talk to me about it in the lobby of my apartment building and i stabbed him in the kidney with my arm blade despite playing a non-lethal game up to that point. That game got a 9.5.
If Slavery the Game is the best slave trading game of all time, it should be given a fair shake.
If this were a real thing, which is doubtful, it really does depend on where it is coming from. Are they focusing on the people hurt by slavery, or focusing on the immorality of slavery in the first place?
It kind of reminds me of the board game about the Holocaust that Brenda Brathwaite made, it isn't attempting to belittle or insult people hurt in these incidents, but uses sensitive subject matters to prod at the players for some sort of emotional reaction and internal struggle. For Brathwaite's board game, it was more when you realized what it is that you were playing that you had to make a very real moral decision about continuing to play the game.
With this it seems the trailer itself, suggesting that such a game could exist, is forcing that moral decision from the potential players.
Or it is some assholes who think they are hilarious... One of the two.
I dunno, if you look at it from a purely gameplay perspective, we've all already played a "Slavery game" at one point or another - Buying "slaves"? Making them work without pay? Sending them to certain death, or else just plain working them until they die? Sounds like an RTS game to me.
If this was a real game, I'd give it a try, if only for shit and giggles.
I dunno, if you look at it from a purely gameplay perspective, we've all already played a "Slavery game" at one point or another - Buying "slaves"? Making them work without pay? Sending them to certain death, or else just plain working them until they die? Sounds like an RTS game to me.
If this was a real game, I'd give it a try, if only for shit and giggles.
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Contest:
12:00 AM on 09.04.2011 | 
(001) 502 383 1956
Know what? That's not a bad idea.
(sorry, that's the first thought I had when I watched this.)
I also like games like this so I'd probably buy it.
....
I'm going to hell.
... however, a Tropico style game that works within the paradigm of pre to early colonization era Africa that shows the African practice of indentured servitude going horribly arwy would make for interesting edu-gaming, I reckon. As an African regional leader, do you sell you indentured servants for a power grab, or do you resist the power offered by foreign slavers?
Just saying. If you're talking about games getting that "movie" respect, somebody's gotta go there, right?
... super illegal?
fuck you all. this is hilarious. i'd buy the shit out of it.
also, how has no one thought that maybe this is to drum up attention for an anti-racism game? makes sense to me. then again, I don't live on destructoid and huff jenkum.
That's terrible PR for a PR firm to have produced. You can't be right. I can see an idiotic dev team thinking it was a good idea just to get attention, but any legit marketing team should be drawn and quartered for this shit. It is reaaally well-produced though.
amirite guys?
I can appreciate how you might find it hard to believe but as El Jefe himself has pointed out, advertisers don't always have the same sense of ethics as most people.
I don't think that slavery should be put up on a pedestal, but it's pretty clear that the gaming community likes to cherry pick their moral outrage.
Plus Pokemon basically has you capture wild animals and have them fight each other, anyone who bitches about this better not own a Pokemon game.
If Slavery the Game is the best slave trading game of all time, it should be given a fair shake.
The number one at the beginning of the phone number isn't an area code, it's a country code. America's country code is 1.
It kind of reminds me of the board game about the Holocaust that Brenda Brathwaite made, it isn't attempting to belittle or insult people hurt in these incidents, but uses sensitive subject matters to prod at the players for some sort of emotional reaction and internal struggle. For Brathwaite's board game, it was more when you realized what it is that you were playing that you had to make a very real moral decision about continuing to play the game.
With this it seems the trailer itself, suggesting that such a game could exist, is forcing that moral decision from the potential players.
Or it is some assholes who think they are hilarious... One of the two.
If this was a real game, I'd give it a try, if only for shit and giggles.
If this was a real game, I'd give it a try, if only for shit and giggles.
Is this what they call "Refuge in Audacity"?
Because you'll write a column about it, fucking idiot.